


As Stories Go

by Scytale



Category: The Last Unicorn - Peter S. Beagle
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-01
Updated: 2019-09-01
Packaged: 2020-10-04 14:50:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20472839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scytale/pseuds/Scytale
Summary: Molly and Schmendrick in Haggard's castle, and afterwards.





	As Stories Go

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Thimblerig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/gifts).

Molly was scrubbing the throne room when Schmendrick came to find her.

He waited until she noticed him, and when she looked up, he said, "I almost said myself on fire today."

It was evening; only Molly's small lantern provided them with light. Dark circles pooled under the magician's eyes; his face looked too old for its youthful features.

Haggard did not sleep often, and so, neither did his magician, who he expected to be available day and night. Haggard would call his magician to him without regard for the hour of day — or maybe, Molly thought, he marked it, and ensuring that his magician never slept well provided part of the pleasure.

"Are you all right?" she asked.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Just a mishap with some torches. I got out of the way in time — I’m rather good at getting out of the way of my own mistakes, now.” Schmendrick smiled, mirthlessly. “King Haggard laughed.”

“Come on,” Molly said. She tucked the scrubbing cloth back over the bucket and lifted that, and the lamp. Haggard would not like it if he found either of those things in here. “I’ll make you some coffee and something to eat.”

He followed her like an obedient hound to the scullery. She set the lantern aside, and the sound made the cat sleeping on the table wake and look up. It blinked at her, gave Schmendrick a disdainful look, and then began to lick its paw, carefully and thoroughly.

While he sat, she built the fire, made the coffee, and fetched him some bread and cheese. It was good bread and cheese; the coffee was as black and bitter as Haggard's heart, and they'd run out of cream and sugar.

“Have you seen  _ her _ ?” Schmendrick asked. He took a sip of the coffee and made a face. There was only one person he could have meant.

“This morning,” Molly said. She took some of the bread and cheese for herself, and when the cat looked over at her, its tail arched, she offered it a small piece of the cheese, which it deigned to take from her fingers. “She's been with Lir, since."

“I saw her in the hall, when she was waiting for him to go off with her. She fled. She avoids me, you know. She looks at me and sees a useless failure, Haggard’s toady.”

"She doesn't see any of us," Molly said. "Only Lir."

Though she was not sure the Lady Amalthea saw even him. Perhaps she simply loved him unseeing, or perhaps she reflected the love in his eyes. That thought troubled Molly.

“She still talks to you," Schmendrick said. "You were right. I am a fool and a failure, and I could not turn cream into butter. Or her into...what she was.”

He fell into a glum silence and stared down into his cup as if it contained the sum of his failures. It was a small cup, but he was determined. Molly watched him for a moment.

There was a small part of her that felt grimly satisfied, that wanted to point at him and say, _I told you so,_ _magician_. 

But she was too weary for that; her hands were chapped and blistering, and her knees and back ached, though she had told no one about that. Her heart ached, too. She had traveled through woods and deserts and wastelands with Schmendrick and the unicorn, but those long days of traveling had not ground her down like this — because then, there had been a unicorn.

Now there was only the young and mortal Lady Amalthea, whose hands could love but not heal, who was beautiful in her mortality, who didn't remember who she was or what Molly had been to her.

Molly said, in a voice that was neither sharp nor gentle, “You sound just like Cully.”

The cat looked between her and Schmendrick and slunk off.

Schmendrick’s head snapped up. His green eyes flashed with indignation. “Like Cully! How am I like that coward and thief —”

“He’d mope just like that, back in the greenwood,” she said. “When he was writing a song about his exploits and he couldn’t figure out a rhyme. He’d mope and complain and swear he was the sorriest man that ever lived, and for a while there’d be no living with him.”

“And then what?” the magician said, sullen-faced.

“Sooner or later,” she said gently. “He’d find the right words, and his ballad would turn out the way it should be."

"Songs," Schmendrick said scornfully. "Rhymes and melodies. We are dealing with magic."

"We are also dealing with stories," Molly said. "You told me that once — that we are all living in a story. And I have heard enough stories to know that there is always a part where hope is gone, where the answers are missing, where the heroes need to endure."

That was how it happened in all the stories — when Robin Hood was thrown in the darkest dungeons, when fair maidens were held captive by the wicked lords, when miracles seemed out of reach.

"Do you believe that?" Schmendrick asked her.

Silence spread between them, broken only by the crackling of the fire, which flared; the shadows in the scullery lightened for a moment.

The cat watched the two of them with golden eyes, its tail twitching.

"I'm trying," Molly said. "I believe she needs us to."

* * *

  
In the end, Molly was right after all; Schmendrick found the words that changed a girl to a unicorn and a hero to a king. After Lir had left for his throne, Molly and Schmendrick wandered through now-blooming deserts and woods.

In the villages they passed, Schmendrick mended pots and pans with a touch of his finger, healed plants and children, and pulled rabbits from hats.

"I like rabbits," he told Molly the first time he did that trick. "And it's good to stay in practice."

Molly would sing in the taverns, sometimes, though usually Schmendrick did enough to earn them their lodgings — but still, she liked to sing. 

The year passed. In the summer, they made it to the edge of a forest where lilacs bloomed. The trees were tall and old, their leaves whispering a susurrus of secrets.

"A unicorn lives here," Schmendrick said.

"Ours?" asked Molly.

"I don't know," Schmendrick said.

They stayed in the woods, taking care not to disturb the animals — or even the trees, for it seemed to Molly that the trees were aware and as magic as anything else here, that they only chose not to move.

On the third day, they saw the unicorn. It was nightfall, and she stood at a thicket, watching them with her eyes that were filled with green woods. She was their unicorn, and she glowed like the reflection of moonlight on dark water. Molly had barely drawn a breath to say something — she did not know what — when the unicorn turned and fled from them, a streak of light that disappeared into the woods.

"She didn't come speak to us," Molly said.

"She has already said what she wanted to say to both of us," Schmendrick said, glancing toward Molly. He was guessing on her part, but by the way she looked away from him, her expression hidden, he knew it was true. "But she let us see her. No human would see a unicorn in her woods, unless she wills it."

They left the woods behind them that morning. The meadow around the woods bloomed with lilacs; the most industrious bees had already found the flowers.

"I was thinking," Schmendrick said. "We might see what lies beyond the edge of the world."

"I'd like that," Molly said, and they walked in the direction of the sunrise, toward a sky that was painted rose and gold.

After all, they had reached the end of their quest, twice over — or perhaps they had just reached the beginning.

  
  
  



End file.
